Technically, narrowly, yes, fine, but having environments that foster those things is much better than living in a desert and having to build those communities yourselves. Many will not have the "opportunity" in the latter case because there's a million other things that come up all the time. It's about reducing friction in accessing those benefits.

The old adage comes to mind: "you loved your college years because you lived in a socialized infrastructure with walkable neighborhoods and the opportunities for spontaneously meeting old friends and new people alike".

>young people have the opportunity to do [this] outside of university

Same goes for computer science and like every humanities degree - you can become an autodidact in any subject that does not require expebsive equiment and facilities.

On the contrary, > 60% of most people's lifelong friends consist of people they met at school or university. That suggests we are not very good at connecting eith random people we meet on the street.